John Coltrane - Interstellar Space

2000 reissue

Earlier Coltrane efforts such as 1958’s hard-bop masterpiece Blue Train, 1960’s harmonic breakthrough Giant Steps and 1965’s majestic modal prayer A Love Supreme have taken their rightful places in the jazz canon.

But in the half-century since it was recorded, Interstellar Space has steadily amassed a following, influencing everyone from jazz elders such as Jack DeJohnette and Peter Brötzmann to Wilco guitarist Nels Cline and singer-songwriter Kurt Vile. It’s an album that has come to epitomize the genre-transcending profundity of Coltrane’s often-controversial late work.

Meanwhile, Interstellar Space‘s saxophone/drums instrumentation – rare at the time the album was recorded, and never before featured on an entire LP – has grown into its own jazz subgenre. There have been many releases in that configuration from Brötzmann and Peeter Uuskyla; Bill McHenry and Andrew Cyrille; Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey; and Paul Flaherty and Randall Colbourne and others,